SERAPIAS CORDIGERA

Family and Genus:- See- ORCHIDACEAE

Common Names:- Heart-flowered orchid

Homotypic Synonyms:- Helleborine cordigera, Lonchitis cordigera,

Serapias lingua var. cordigera, Serapiastrum cordigerum.

Meaning:- Serapias (Gr) After Serapis an Egyptian deity, a name used by the

Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides for an orchid.

Cordigera (L) Heart-shaped.

General description:- Short rather robust perennial.

Stem:-

1) Generally 15-40 cm tall, often with purple dots and streaks at the base of the

stem and lower leaves.

Leaves:-

1) Narrow, linear to lanceolate, channelled and often curving upwards.

2) Basal sheaths, green, usually speckled with red or purple.

Flowers:-

1) Spike, short, dense, ovoid, with 2-7(-10) rather large flowers.

2) Bracts, erect, equalling or somewhat shorter than the flowers, lanceolate,

cymbiform, silvery-grey with thin purple veins.

3) Sepals and petals, ovate-lanceolate, resembling bracts, connivent and forward-

directed.

4) Labellum, usually dark reddish-purple, distinctly constricted between the

hypochile and epichile.

a) lateral lobes, of the hypochile large, erect, rounded;

b) epichile, 20-28 mm, pendent or slightly reflexed, ovate, acuminate, bearded in

the middle.

Key features:-

1) Labellum, dark reddish-purple, with 2 divergent ridges at the base. distinctly

constricted between the hypochile and epichile.

2) Lateral lobes of the hypochile c. 1/3 as wide as the epichile,

3) Bracts, shorter than the flowers.

Cretan plants tend to be rather slender and have been called subsp cretica.

Click here for a glossary of terms used.

Habitat:- Seasonally damp places in dry open shrubby vegetation, grassland, open

coniferous woodland and olive groves on non-cacareous substrates. 0-700 m.

Distribution:- Scattered in W Greece. - S & W Europe, northwards to NW France

eastwards to SW Anatolia. Limited distribution across Crete.

Flowering time:- Apr to early June.

Photo by:- Dr. Armin Jagel